March 25 - Another Volksmarch in Moelln
Whoa! A sunny day—that is to say, what we would call in the U.S. “partly cloudy” but which is described in Germany as “6-8 hours of sunlight expected”. No matter, this was definitely a day for walking so we took our chain of trains back out to Moelln to try another one of those 8 routes. Despite the seemingly awkward shifts from bus to S-Bahn to regional train to Buechen to regional train to Moelln, the entire trip took us 1 hour and 13 minutes going out and 1 hour and 12 minutes coming back. That total time enroute (door to door) compared very well to the amount of driving we typically do in the U.S. to reach a Volksmarch.
This time we didn’t waste any time—we went directly to the sundries store at the train station and had our walking booklets stamped before setting off on Wanderweg (Route) number 5, which was a loop that extended 15 kilometers south and east of Moelln. We worked our way up to the Moelln water tower but by a completely different route than we had done when we walked Route number 6. Altho Route 5 covered some of the same areas as Route 6, the club had done a very good job of keeping them separate—we were together with Route 6 for a total of about 20 minutes out of a total walking time of almost 4 hours.
From the water tower we worked our way thru some woods to a “Tierpark” (Animal Park) that had free-ranging deer plus other animals in habitats rather like a zoo. This Tierpark specialized in animals native to the area but most were still in their winter quarters. Some birds were out in their aviaries, however, and in particular we saw the Maeusebussard (Literally: Mouse-buzzard) closely enough to determine that this was the bird we had mistaken for a hawk on the train trips to Husum and Schleswig. It is a brown bird with black markings and particularly the bottom of the wings has a nice pattern of black bands on brown. But even after seeing it up close, we both concluded that this bird really looked and acted in the cage and in the wild exactly like a hawk and nothing at all like any of the vultures we had ever seen. That is, they acted like nervous, edgy quick-moving hunters and not at all like the usually rather phlegmatic, slow-flying vultures we have in Virginia. Curious, that.
As we left the Tierpark we got briefly lost again, which seemed to happen to us at least twice on each of these Moelln walks. The markings on this trail ranged from the nice white squares with black numbers to numbers crudely painted or carved into any available wood surface, and occasionally we could find no markings at all. That usually happened at major trail intersections, which explains how we got lost. But on this detour we saw a small deer taking a drink from a bathtub water trough and it was tame enough to let some kids pet it and pose while I took a set of pictures.
Using the map and instructions we puzzled our way from the Tierpark over to the end of a long, narrow lake and across a graceful little bridge over the stream at the upper end of it. There was a nice lakeside trail, but that was reserved for some other route—Route 5 led up a long set of steps to the bluff on the east side of the lake. The last ice age had ice sheets extending right into this area, according to the displays in the Altona Museum, so I rather imagine that these lakes were carved by glaciers. In any case, the trail was well groomed and surprisingly level. Since the trees had not yet leafed out, we could see the lake below us quite well as we walked along, the sunlight in the forest made it quite pleasant. Whenever, the sun went behind a cloud and the wind kicked up, however, we cooled off quickly and started putting back on some of our layers of clothes.
The lakeside trail ended at a T-intersection at the campground that also served as a checkpoint for some of the other Moelln walk routes, and I was amazed at how close together the camping trailers were placed. Some were clearly what the Germans call Dauerkamper (long-term campers) who had put skirts underneath the trailers and landscaped the very tiny plots with flowers and decorations. I had hoped for an Imbiss and lunch at the campground, but we turned off before we actually entered it so I was disappointed.
From the campground we walked east for a couple of kilometers in the forest before turning north thru some fields toward a small town, but once again the route turned off just before the town and I couldn’t see anyplace to eat. We ran across another one of those modest memorials to soldiers lost in WWI and WWII that we’ve found in many surprising places. The memorial was carved from a large, old stone and placed in a little roadside park. As we continued on our way, we often found the IVV trail markings in surprising places like at the peak of the gable of a roadside picnic shelter.
As it turned out, I had to wait another hour for lunch until we had completed our loop and returned to the downtown section of Moelln where we found an assortment of small restaurants, cafes, and Imbisses. After almost 4 hours of walking, I was really tired and wanted to sit down and eat, but Monika wanted to be sure we didn’t miss the 2:38 train. We compromised on buying the German equivalent of a U.S. hamburger, a Frikadelle in a sliced broetchen (roll), and carrying them down to the train station where we had our walking books stamped and then sat and ate while we waited for the train. I was pretty pooped by this time and relaxed for the train rides back to Reinbek while reading about an American writer-photographer who retraced Marco Polo’s journey from Venice to China and back, taking pictures all the way. It sounded like he had a blast for a couple of years doing that and I’m sure the book about his journey will be interesting.
One comment the author made was how much things have NOT changed in the over 700 years since Polo went over that route. I think you have to be careful not to be misled by superficial appearances when you try to analyze to what extent cultures stay the same or change over time. An tribesman living in a yurt in the Gobi dessert may look like his lifestyle has not changed, but if he has a laptop and cell phone his real culture may have changed quite a bit. Conversely, some folks like the Inuit of the Arctic regions may accept the trappings of modern technology such as housing, dress styles, and snowmobiles without really changing their underlying culture. In my opinion, you have to analyze to find the core aspects of a culture and then very carefully try to determine if those are shifting or staying stable over time. The widespread emphasis of precise time in German culture, for example, has stayed strong since my first visit in 1973 and was probably a core cultural value long before that. The emphasis on ecology and the environment has, however, apparently gained strength and wide acceptance in German culture in the same time period and may now be a core value.
The 236 bus was waiting at the Reinbek station, so I only had to limp a block home from the bus stop before I could take off the boots and put my feet up for the evening. We watched ice dancing part of the World Championships in skating for the rest of the afternoon and again later that evening. I cannot understand the scoring in that sport at all and rather frequently disagree with the experts (what else is new?), but I can identify just a little bit with the participants. After all, I know how to skate (barely) and know how to dance (badly), so just maybe I could actually do something like ice dancing (barely badly). But when I watch something like the pairs skating or men or women’s competitions, I just know I can’t ever even possibly jump up in the air, twirl around three times, and land gracefully on one skate. I can, however, readily imagine how many muscles I would strain or bruise if I even tried it. With the ski jumping, I am even more at a loss why perfectly sane men would come roaring down a slope to jump off a cliff wearing nothing but skis. If I tried that, I’m quite sure I would be counting broken bones at the end!
I mean, who invented that sport, anyway? Did those long winter nights drive young single guys like Sven and Olaf in some rural area of Scandinavia crazy for excitement? I can imagine a discussion going something like this:
Of course, maybe I’m wrong and there was some totally noble, rational origin of the sport of ski jumping. The Iditarod race in Alaska, for example, was sparked by the harrowing mushing of a man and a team of dogs across Alaska to bring desperately needed medicine to a town stricken with serious disease. Very, very noble, that. Was there some town in Scandinavia lying at the bottom of a cliff that was stricken with a serious disease and someone had to ski off the cliff to get it to them? Somehow I find the Sven and Olaf story to be more plausible because taking skis and jumping off a cliff with them is just such an odd thing to do unless you are looking for a pure adrenaline rush.
When I visited the Lake Placid Olympic Games site once I took the elevator to the top of those ski jumps and just sat there looking downhill. TV does not correctly depict the angle of those things—it is almost straight down and I got woozy just thinking about sliding downhill on a pair of skis completely out of control. I do not have to use my imagination much to think about that, since John decided used the “sink or swim” method to teach me to ski. He simply took me to the top of an intermediate ski run on Powderhorn Mountain and then pushed me off downhill. I still feel badly about the old man I knocked down by running over the front of his skis as I was canonballing down the slope. I couldn’t turn, so when the ski run turned left I kept going straight until I hit the snow bank at the side, plunged thru that, and then caught a tree branch to get stopped with the front of my skis over a fifty foot drop off with rocks on the bottom. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t go backward uphill on skis—if the alternative is falling a couple of hundred feet onto rocks you jolly well can go backward on skis, trust me. I have nothing for the folks doing ski jumping other than slack-jawed amazement, together with a scientific itch to use a functional MRI on them to see if their fear circuits are, as I suppose, somehow impaired or dampened compared to normal folks. Possibly, the circuits are normal but the process is a gradual habituation to an apparently dangerous situation. I know I was scared witless my first few times flying (What really is keeping us up? Those wing things? Really?), but now I have flown so much I just can’t work up a sweat unless I detect an abnormal engine or lose flight controls.
We wrapped up the evening watching the men’s single skating competition. Clearly the Chinese are now very competitive in this sport and were regularly finishing in the top 3. But they don’t seem to do ski jumping yet, perhaps because they are too sensible? The coverage was live, but the performances were arranged so that the very best competitors came last, which was bad for me. Without naps, it was hard for me to make it past 9 p.m. with the result that I saw the mediocre performances in each sport but not the very best ones. Monika would, of course, cheerfully say something the next morning like “You should have seen the great Chinese pair last night! They were wonderful!” as if that would start my day off on the right foot, but I also have to admit I just don’t seem to get as engrossed as she is in these things. She is, after all, also the big football fanatic in our family and if you consider she grew up attending all girl’s school (no sports) in a country that only played soccer, that is distinctly weird.
Copyright 2004 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt| Prolog | Map | Epilog |
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